Apple

Vern Thiessen's script looks like a classic "pick a girl" story, whose conflicted lead has to choose between wife and mistress. But this dynamic is incidental to the real drama, rooted in fatal-illness caregiving and the successive shades of love it can bring out, like the brilliant hues of a changing leaf. Thiessen speaks to the process with convincing sensitivity, and his faintly poetic dialogue sets up some strikingly resonant moments. However, the play's clinical-diagnosis framing device and blunt onstage nudity are pretty inert, and even allowing for theater's understood compressions of time, people, and places there are waaay too many coincidences in the piece. But Profiles star Darrell W. Cox, Amy Matheny, and Brady Fuqua are all very good. --Brian Nemtusak a Through 6/3: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM, Profiles Theatre, 4147 N. Broadway, 773-549-1815, $15-$25.